Transform Your Brand Into A Marketing Machine with Greg Merrilees

Foreign.

It is Nick here and welcome to this week's episode of Scale Up. So joining me on the show today is Greg Merrilies. Now, he is the founder and director of studio1design.com which is a world leading website design and branding agency based in Australia. Now, I have to apologize up front. When I speak to a fellow Australian, the Aussie draw comes back. So you're gonna have to put up with two Aussies going backwards and forth on today's episode. So if you don't mind the Aussie accent, you're in the right place. But the reason I wanted to get Greg on the show today is that I am a massive fan of branding. I'm a really big fan of personal branding and I always go go as far as to say that if you're not building a personal brand in this day and age, particularly with the onset of AI and all these other sort of technology opportunities and complexities that are hitting us, then you are missing a trick. And not only is Greg an absolute expert and leader in brand design, he has designed websites and brands for Sylvester Stallone. He's also done Frank Oz who is the voice of Yoda. So if you're a Star wars geek like me, you're going to hear a bit of that today. And not only that, is he's got a really interesting way of thinking about design principles and thinking about clarity of messaging, all the key components that allow you to be able to get out there and tell your story, help people drive leads for your business and grow whatever you are trying to do in your entrepreneurial journey.

If you've got nothing and you want to just put your name out there, if you can just keep adding value and into your audience's life by adding helpful content, whatever that form is and having lead magnets to help build trust in your brand. Have an email marketing nurture sequence, whatever's needed, basically to just incrementally over time build trust in your brand. And then every time you get some more social proof or some more trust like authority elements and impact metrics, just keep raising the bar on your website.

So we're going to have a fun conversation about all of those things today. Sit back, relax and welcome to Scale up with Nick Bradley. Greg Merrilies. Hey everybody, it is Nick Bradley here. Welcome to Scale up for another week. Today we're going to get into an amazing topic. Actually one of my most favorite topics because my background back in the day was branding. It was marketing. You wouldn't guess sometimes by the stuff I talk about now. But I actually started off working for the Coca Cola company in a brand role as a graduate and then I ended up doing marketing across some big media businesses. And today I am joined on the show by Greg Merrilies. He's all the way from Australia, so you have to put up with us going backwards and forwards with our awesome twangs. But Greg is an absolute expert when it comes to branding, website design and making people look really, really cool with really, really awesome websites. Welcome to the show, Greg.

Thank you so much, Nick. Appreciate it.

Yeah, I joke about it, I joke about that, honestly, because I've lived in UK for like 20 odd years. Like, if I go back, I'll tell you funny story. I went back to Adelaide recently and I was in line at a pub and it was like getting a little bit fractious as it does sometimes at 10:11 at night and some guy turned around and said, I'll go back to England. Your pom.

Oh, really? Yeah, and I'm not at all.

I'm from Australia, man.

Mate.

So anyways, but I did. I tend to sound more Australian when I speak to someone in Australia. So that's.

I heard you say that on a podcast. I think it was to change Schramko, but yeah, yeah, I can't hear it at all. I can't hear the English accent at all.

There we go. Well, you sound very Australian and you're from Melbourne and I used to live in Sydney. So it's nice to. Nice to connect. It always makes me feel a little bit homesick when I speak to someone from Australia. So welcome, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here, buddy.

So we sort of have, you know, mixed in similar circles. I'd heard of you previously by a few people in the US actually talking about how great your, your thinking is around branding and design. And then more recently with James Schranko who's been on the show as well, mentioned how great you are at this stuff. So I wanted to have you on before get into, I think, the specifics of branding and how you can position yourself and all the detail there. Before we press record, we, we said that there's a, a Star wars thing here that. Something to do with you being the voice or helping with the voice of Yoda.

Yeah, exactly. Frank Oz. Yeah, well, yeah, we designed a website for Frank Oz which was pretty amazing. And yeah, had a couple of zoom calls with him and he was as funny on just our, you know, private zoom calls as he is In. In real life and on all the movies and Sesame street and all the things. He. He's just. Yeah, great guy, but, yeah. And the way we got onto him, it's kind of a long game. I mean, we, you know, we designed for all these various people, but back in the day, and I don't know how far you want me to go back to start this story, but essentially we were T shirt designers. Right. And. And then I had to pivot because the. The clothing industry went vertical and squeezed out the middleman who were the wholesale clients, and they were our clients. Right. So what happened was I had to look online for podcasts, and I found a podcast, Think out there, which was Ezra Firestone, who's like an E Comm, you know, absolute legend, and he's part of SmartMarket.com now, and he sold part of it. But the point is. And the other person was Jane Schramko, and James Schranko then became my coach for the next 10 years. But Ezra Firestone had an event in San Diego, and he invited me to come and speak on his stage. And there was somebody in the stage that knew somebody that knew Frank Oz, and it was the wife, actually, the new Frank Oz's wife, Victoria labaume. And we designed for her first, and then we ended up designing for Frank Oz, the voice of Yoda, after that.

Wow.

Okay. I mean, yeah, I imagine it is, but it's always, as we know, a lot of it's through connections.

Right.

And I sometimes say on this show that, you know, if you're invited to someone's place for a dinner party, you're automatically edified.

Right?

Because you're there, you're invited in, as opposed to trying to kind of build something cold. But I think that takes us a little bit into. Into the topic around. I suppose it is around connection and conversion and authority. How did you get into all this? So what was. I mean, you mentioned T shirts, but how did you get into the kind of idea of. Of branding and communication?

Yeah, I guess I've always just loved branding in general. You know, I've always just thought when I'm just walking down the street, I look at a lot of bookshops, look at logos and windows and all that sort of stuff. And it's just a passion of mine. I'm always looking for, you know, the. The sort of perfect look for, you know, for its business. Does it. Does the look and feel match the business? And I guess from, you know, when you're designing T shirts, we used to design packaging as well. It's kind of like a self serve environment. It's not like a website where you have the opportunity to, you know, really draw people in, have a funnel, have all these different steps and things like that. It's really just, you really got to say, okay, you either like the look and feel or you don't. And if you do, then you go especially with packaging, then you're going to look at the benefits and the features and things like that. But the look and feel, if you think, here's one T shirt that I like with a really cool logo or design on it, and here's one that's pretty average, you're going to be drawn to the one that you like for whatever reason. And so that's kind of just, it just drew me in. So we did T shirts for like, you know, 12 years before, you know, the clothing industry did go vertical. But yeah, from that point, just the whole branding and T shirt design, even when we sent. Sorry. When I did find these podcast hosts, they said to me that the logo sucks or they said it on their podcast that their logos sucked. And I just saw that as an opportunity to design them a new logo. But the way we design logos because of the background is does it look cool on a T shirt? Right. So. Okay.

Right, okay.

Yeah.

And so we sent them a new logo for Think I get and. And did in this really cool font and this kind of logo kind of. It just looked really cool. And Ezra said, you know, hot dang. Makes us look like a fancy softball team in his New York accent, you know, and, and yeah, it was just, I don't know, it's just branding to me is just something that I feel like is in my blood. And then my wife is also a. She's a fashion designer and she's, she did that for, you know, 15 years. She now works in our business as our brand director. And because of all the experience that she has as well, you know, it just has really good eye for design and color and composition and things like that that make up brand, essentially.

Yeah, I love it, love it. And I like the idea of a logo actually because I think about some of my assets, they're kind of word marks and things like that. But the idea of something that really you love, right? Or I love, then it kind of comes across, I think, in a lot of the other things that you do because you're proud of it, right? You're proud of the positioning of you've created. So let me ask you a couple of. I suppose I Call them sort of foundation questions just so we can kind of set the stage as we get into the detail. What is. What is a brand to you?

To me, it's pretty much what Jeff Bezos says. A brand is what others say about you when you're not in the room.

Right.

And let's just unpack that a little bit more. Really. It doesn't. It doesn't need to represent you and who you are. It needs to, in my opinion, needs to appeal to your customers so that they then take action with your brand and they feel like your brand is an extension of them. And even to the extent of. Some brands could create an image, let's say Apple or Rolls Royce or Mercedes or whatever. People want to be associated with that brand because it helps raise their profile for whatever reason. Right. And so, yeah, Brandon is really more about how it makes other people feel. That's the way I look at it.

Yeah, I like that. I used to say a brand back in the day when I was working in branding, which is kind of a funny story in its own right, because back in the 90s, this was pre Internet or digital marketing, so the analytical side wasn't really there. You couldn't measure everything. So everything was about like, you know, how big the billboard was with the, you know, the coke sign on it.

Yeah, sure.

It was fascinating. And you measured it back. You remember those days back. And it was back to eyeballs. That drove past the. The billboard on, you know, if it was the Sydney Harbor Bridge or something like that. That was. That was marketing. But we used to say that a brand was a promise of consistency as a thing.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And where things fall apart and people. I see this happening all the time, and you must see it happening all the time is when people start to do things that contradict or conflict with their brand message. So if they've got a message, but the design doesn't associate with that, you've lost someone straight away. Equally, if you change your brand too much.

Yeah.

The same thing can happen. People. People, I suppose, Mistrust.

That's right. Yeah. It needs to be congruent. But also I think the bigger picture is it needs to align with your mission, your purpose, your core values, and what your, you know, how you want to be seen in the world, essentially. So I think that's more important than, yeah, just, you know, the look and feel it just because you can change the look and feel over time. And I think it's good to have a brand refresh and, you know, as long as it's congruent across all of your marketing touch points. I think that's the most important thing and that aligns with your mission and your, your core values.

Perfect. Well, the other reason I wanted to have you on the show is I, I talk obviously about scaling and selling companies. And one of the components of a company that has a high valuation is its brand differentiation. I'm not sure if you've, if you knew, you probably know that intuitively, but it's actually assessed. So if you go and sell a company to certainly a private equity firm, they'll do a brand audit on you.

Yeah.

And the audit, again, it depends on the size of the company, but we're talking sort of eight or nine figure valuations. But that brand audit is asking some very interesting questions. It's asking about firstly, what your customers or clients think about you. And that's based not just on the sort of logo per se, it's about the whole customer experience. So that's interesting. And then the second part of that is how is that related to your competitive set and do you stand out? Are you remarkable? Are you kind of number one or two in your defined market? So that's how I would if I was a private equity guy assessing your work, let's say with a, with a business. That's how we look at it.

I love it. And that's when we design a brand, we do a competitor analysis as well. And that's not because we want to copy them or, you know, be similar to them. It's completely the opposite. We want to zig where they're zagging because we want to be memorable. And if all of your competitors, competitors all have blue in their palette, then don't use blue for a start. You know, it's just little simple things like that. But yeah, the look and feel, in my opinion, to make it memorable needs to stand out in your immediate nation, you know, against your immediate competitors. So it's a similar approach.

Yeah, let's get into the process so people can understand what this looks like. I'd love to see how your process works. So someone turns up and they're saying, you know what, I kind of want to create or refresh my brand. How do you start that conversation?

Yeah, for us, it's generally a brand and, or, and, or a website, but it's generally the same process. So for a start, I mean, we need to really look under the hood and understand what their business is, who their target audience is, what pain points their target audience has, what their business, you know, solves. For them, how they'll benefit from their alpha, what their product features are and all that depends if it's product OR service or SaaS or whatever the case is. And then on top of that, we obviously want to understand, let's say if it's a website that whatever they're using for their lead magnets, what they're using to build trust in their brand, you know, do they have cold visitors, warm visitors, hot visitors. And we need to sort of match the look and feel and everything that goes into the design, whether it's branding and a full brand style guide and all that, or the website to appeal to all of those aspects of their business. Right. And I think that there is a lot that goes into it. So for instance, we'll have a 40 question questionnaire for the client to fill out and then we'll jump on a call and we'll dive deeper into that, you know, questionnaire and then we'll help strategize on how we're going to approach their brand or their website, etc. And from that point then we'll get our brand designer, our brand director, sorry, my wife, to say.

That's your, that's your wife, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

I can see the, the power here within the businesses, you know, Very.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know the story.

I do. I know, mate, I know. I've got to tease you a bit.

Yeah. And so then she'll create a mood board and this mood board is not just like any standard mood board you find on Pinterest or wherever. This is like a really thoughtful thought out, like, you know, 15 page mood board that goes over everything apart from brand voice, when I do brand voice. But as far as the look and feel, she'll give the full direction for photography direction, even for product photography direction, if it's E commerce, for the color palette obviously, but primary color, secondary color, you know, hex codes, pantone colors for print, all that sort of stuff. But then the logo direction, the, you know, just composition for general layout, the whole social media, how that's going to look and feel. Pretty much every aspect of the brand is very detailed. And then she'll do a walkthrough video to explain why she's put together, what she's put together, which is all based on the brief. Right. So it's a pretty detailed process and then we get the client's feedback on that before we start designing. So it's a big process just before we start designing.

Yeah, you've got to. What's the Whole the concept of sharpening the axe right before you kind of cut the tree down. You've got to get that.

Right.

And.

Exactly. Yeah.

And your main, I mean, obviously your main, let's call it output, is. Is a website. Does it go beyond that often? Like, if someone's got books coming out, they want book designs of their covers. I mean, because I imagine there's a. Some form of guidelines that comes out of the process too, even if it's a simplistic view of that, so that people can kind of keep consistency.

Yeah. So we'll generally, like create a full brand style guide. Right. If we're designing the website or the brand usually comes with a style guide as well. And then from there, yes, we'll design all of their marketing assets. We've designed a lot of book covers. We don't design full books, just the book covers or ebooks. We'll do up to like 10, 15 pages for an ebook. But yeah, apart from that, all of their marketing graphics, their social media ad campaigns, what. It's generally online. We do a few little, you know, brochures for offline print, business card stationary, but only if we do their full website and brand. We don't just do that other stuff if it's not associated with their full brand. But yeah, pretty much website and logo and branding is the core and everything else is secondary, but definitely digital focused.

Got it. And is there, if we think about sort of the broad spectrum of business owners.

Right.

Obviously you've got the personal brands stuff that I'm doing. Maybe Francoz, I think you did use Sylvester Stallone at some point.

We did, yes. We designed for him. Yep. Doing some NFT things for years back.

Okay, got it.

So.

So where someone's got a personality behind it.

Yeah.

Versus. Because I always think of brands under sort of personal brand, business brand, product brands. So, elon, Tesla Model 3, right. Something like that.

Yes.

Do you find it easier for what you're doing to add the personality of the person to the work you're doing? In other words, is that a prerequisite of your thing? Or can someone come to you with a business and say, I've just got a business and I don't really want to put a personal brand to it, but I want the business to stand out? How does that all work?

Yeah, absolutely. So most of the time our clients who are mainly small businesses, don't have. Have an authority level of a Sylvester Stallone or Frank Oz. Right. So.

Or anything like that.

Right.

I just had to put my name next to Sylvester Sloan. I'm kind of living, living back to my, my early years watching Rambo, right?

Oh yeah, exactly. I love that. But the point is, so some people may or may not want their, their face to be the face of a brand. Personal brand, sure. But then when they have a business, they don't always want to be the, the Nick Bradley Show. You know, if you're on like high value exit, you may want to business at some point. So, you know, that's a consideration that we have to consider when we're designing a website. And realistically, it depends. Let's say, you know, Elon Musk, you don't need. You probably wouldn't even. You just put his name there and people would go, okay, we know who that is. But majority of these websites were pretty boring.

Couldn't. They could be like literally just Elon Musk dot com.

That's right. They don't exactly.

I do crazy stuff that like makes a lot of money and changes the world. Boom. Total.

That's it. That's one font. That's it. Helvetica.

Exactly. Perfect.

But if you're not that, then you really need to have all these other elements on your website that help showcase your authority. So a share your knowledge in the form of free helpful content, podcasts, you know, blog, video, whatever.

Right.

But apart from that, you might have a lead magnet. But then you also think about the professionalism of the, the design quality and the photography quality and the video quality. That all needs to be high level as well if you're going to raise your authority. And then think about other elements you can put on the web page so that people at a quick glance can see. Let's say we look at your, you know, high value exit. You've got these logos, Forbes, Entrepreneur Inc. Medium, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

Business Insider. So that straight away lets people know that you're associated. It's not that clear actually. Are they clients or are they just where you've been, you know, presented? I'm not sure. But the point is, if you can show some association with these bigger brands and if they are clients, great. But also some impact metrics like it might be what is the success rate of your, the clients you've helped? How many clients have you helped, how long you've been in business? Kind of little things like that so that people just see some numbers that get their attention so they can quickly get a snapshot of your authority level. So we try and raise people's authority even if they're not an Elon Musk we'll make them look as good.

Well, I think it's interesting because you kind of get into the psychology of influence, persuasion and from that selling.

Right.

Which I always find fascinating because you've got this idea that I suppose the first part of that is clarity.

Right.

And I think a lot of people that I see, because I help business owners at different levels, clarity of message is one of the things that I think people really get wrong and as a result of that, they try and change it all the time and then it becomes confusing. And what's your thoughts on. On that specifically? So you know how you had this kind of I help X do X without doing Y or whatever it is.

Yeah.

What's your view on kind of the, the easiest or the simplest way of getting something across? What's the process?

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, for a start, having clarity versus being clever, like clarity wins every time. A lot of businesses are just, they try to have these catchy headlines and they're just not. They don't have clarity. And if people land on your website and they don't understand what it is that you offer and who it is that you solve problems for, they're going to leave.

Right.

So, yeah, it comes back. How do we do it? It comes back to our process and really understanding what problem you're solving and who it's for. And then we just make sure that. So we don't offer copywriting.

Right.

But we'll make sure when we design a website and we offer unlimited design revisions, we'll guide the client on the type of copy or can use one of our copywriting part. But the point is we will guide you on the type of sections that give clarity and boost your authority on every section of the website, essentially. But yeah, it comes down to the initial process in the questionnaire on, you know, and the client doesn't need to think about this, we just need to think about it for them and guide them.

Got it, got it. And in terms of the second part, I think, which is this idea of people starting to trust you.

Right.

So you can do that through testimonials, case studies, edification. Like how do you approach that piece? Because let's say someone comes to you and they say, I've never even got a customer review, I've never done a Google review before. I've no idea what you're talking about. But you know, it's an important concept. How do you approach that sort of challenge?

Yeah, there's definitely a challenge with that. So obviously if we've got an established business, they're easier to work with because there's a lot that we can draw from that, you know, from case studies, et cetera. But if they're a brand new business, they have nothing then you can draw to like industry quotes. Like, for instance, think about the problem that you solve. I just had an idea. I remember seeing something on your website. Yeah. Did you know?

Right.

This is on your website.

70%. We can critique mine live if you want to. I don't get precious about it. You can sit there and go, well, that's crap. And that doesn't make any sense. And you've already said like, you know, did you work with Business Insider or not? Well, that was in it. I was like, you know, they wanted to interview me anyway. But if it makes it, if it actually makes it come alive for people here so they can see it, then do it. It's. I have no issues with it because I realize mine's. Mine's specifically designed more as a consultancy and advisory.

Yeah, yeah.

Even though there's a bit of brand authority in there.

Yeah, absolutely. But the point is you just want to prove that you understand what you're doing and also you want to let people know what led you to start in this business. If you are a brand new business, you have no social proof. So there's a couple of things. One you can borrow from quotes association, like let's say your industry has these quotes that you've got here, like 70% of business owners don't have any kind of personal exit plan in place. At ease, blah, blah, blah. Right. So you can do things like that to help prove that you are the knowledgeable expert. But then I would suggest also on your about page, like tell your backstory, tell. Because obviously if you're starting a business, you've got a lot of experience that led you to this point and that's where you can talk about that experience that helps build trust in your brand. So. So everything is all about building trust. And that's one way to get around having no testimonials at this point.

Yeah, got it.

And you don't use fake testimonials, that's for sure.

Exactly. Don't lie about your kind of experience. I get that. Very important. You mentioned there something that I think is interesting, the concept of storytelling.

Yes.

How important is that these days? I know there's businesses like Story Brand that were created and the Hero's Journey and all that sort of stuff. Is that still relevant today or is it more relevant or is it just changed.

I think it's hugely relevant because I mean, obviously stories sell like people can see themselves in stories and that's the way you want to position a story on your website. So if you think about building a story brand, Donna Miller's approach, it's really a seven part framework which is letting people know that you are the guide, the visitor to the website or your client is the hero. And then you give them a pathway. You tell them, you know, we understand your problem, your situation, a little bit of spin selling in there as well by Neil Rackham, another book we follow. But the point is, right, and then you give them, you give them the choice, right? You can either go, you know, this path or that path and if you go this path or these things are going to happen to you, all these implications, things are going to go wrong. Or you go down our path and we'll help you solve that problem. So if that's kind of a story arc, right, that's the story brand framework. But then also if you think about stories in, in the video in your about page, you tell your backstory and what led you and you tell your why and your mission and just let people get inside your head of, you know, who you are essentially, that can be quite powerful for building trust in your brand. But then also if you think about case studies, tell the story of how you helped that prospect. So they came to you and their situation was this, their problem was that then here's how we helped solve it. And then the results were this. And here's the awesome things I said about how the results that we got for them, that's a story as well. So there's going to be a lot of stories that you can use on your website, but in your marketing as well that lead people to your website. Like if you think about ads for Facebook or whatever, if they're stories of your customers or user generated content, that can be super powerful to bring people off to, you know, to your website, essentially. So, yeah, stories amazing. I love using them.

Yeah.

And again back to, I suppose it comes back to the clarity of what you're trying to, well, who you're trying to help first, who you can help and obviously why that's important and then being clear about how you can help them. And the other thing I find that I see quite a lot is, is when people, particularly at the early stage of their business, they're not really solving a real problem that exists. So yeah, I think the problem's there. Well, there's two parts to this, right? There's Is it actually a problem for the person I'm trying to help?

Right.

If it's not a problem or it's not a really important problem, then they're not going to do anything. And then the second thing is, am I using language that that person would associate with? Not business speak or industry talk or whatever it is.

Yeah, no jargon. Yeah, yeah.

And that's the bit I find fascina. So do you. Do you come across that as well? You must do. It must be one of the big things you have to try and simplify.

It is. Exactly. Because when people come to your website, they don't give a shit about you at all. They only care about what's in it for me, what's in it for them.

Right.

And so, yeah, realistically, most business owners that write their own copy on their website will use tech jargon or stuff that. Cause they're too close to it. They don't understand that. They just think, here's what we offer, here's all the features of what we do. But people don't really care. They just want you to solve their problem. So it's just, yeah, really important to step back and think, right. Why is this visitor here and do I have a unique solution to help them? Because you don't want to just be a me too brand like all of your competitors. You have to really figure out, and we'll help clients with this as well with our questionnaire. Figure out what is different in your business that you offer that is different to your competitors. And we want to highlight that. If you think about the book Influence by Robert Cialdini, one of his factors is scarcity. Most people think that's about a limited time, offer a limited amount of seats, a limited whatever.

Right.

That's part of it. But the main thing is the message he's trying to get across there is that what is unique about your brand that people can't get anywhere else, that's what will make you scarce.

Right.

So that's what we want to put in lights like your main usp.

Yeah, I think that's one of the hardest things to do. It is, I think, what be useful. Let me. I'll present something I've been doing with my various, various kind of brand assets that call that we can kick this around. I think because people listen to this show quite a lot, they'll kind of know the story and the journey. Sometimes people kind of Netflix binge these body episodes. So that's quite fun.

I've done that in the last Week.

Well, there you go. So fantastic. You'll be a raving fan before long. There you go.

It's a great podcast. I love it.

Yeah, I've always been. It's five years in 2019.

Yeah, I saw that. Hold on.

It's been great, actually. Started off as scale up your business. It's funny, actually, because this will kind of lead into the question.

Sure.

I. I was getting some mentoring to launch this. I. The. The origin story of this was leaving private equity after my dad died and I was sitting in a Tony Robbins event, and there was this kind of realization, almost an epiphany, that I need to get a message to people based on all this stuff that I'd been doing for years and years and years in this kind of closet, sort of secret world of private equity equity. So I. Yeah, so it was really interesting. So I remember sitting in Chicago at upw, unleash the power within. And I realized, oh, God. It was actually a zig Ziglar quote. You know, if you help enough people get what they want and need in life, you have everything that you want and need or something. Something like that. Wow, that's an interesting concept. That should help people. Anyway, so it's a long story short. So I got some mentoring. I said, well, actually, how am I gonna do it? Do it. Don't like to write as much. Prefer speaking and stuff like that. So podcast. And I remember sitting there at the very beginning saying, what am I going to call the show? And my mentor at the time was going, I'll call it grow your business.

Really?

And then I thought, well, actually, what I've been doing for years is helping people kind of scale and turn around their companies. And back in 2018, 2019, no one talked about it. Not. Not like they do now. It's now being a bigger thing. But if we kind of progress to your point.

Right.

There's a guy called. Called Todd Brown. I don't know if he came up with this. Yeah. Do you know the unique mechanism concept?

No, I don't actually. I know Todd Brown, but no, I don't know that.

Yeah, well, it's. I don't know if it's his concept, but he talks about a differentiated message that can exist in a crowded market that gets people to see things in a new way, and then you stand out. And he calls it unique mechanism. So his example is Beachbody. I think it was P90X. It's just like another hit workout out.

Right.

Or whatever online. And then they changed everything by talking about the idea of muscle confusion. So their whole positioning was around muscle confusion. That was a new message to market. And all of a sudden P90X, if I want to confuse my muscles, which drives growth and change and whatever it is you're trying to achieve.

Yes.

That's what I do.

Right.

And that's the messaging that worked.

Took off.

Yeah. Wow.

Took off. And I hear lots of stories like this where someone gets the messaging.

Right.

And all of a sudden the whole thing changes. Changes. So my first question to you is, have you seen that? And then I'm going to give you an example of. I'm going to give you a bit of a challenge with mine and we.

Can play with it, no problem. Yeah, we have seen it. And it's really hard. Like you said, it's hard for people to draw that out. They don't know what it is. But the best place to look for is in your customer testimonials. And if you get all of your customer reviews testimonials and put them into like a world word cloud tool, you'll see what words are sticking out the most. And that is part of your uniqueness.

Is that right? That's interesting.

Yeah.

Okay, so look at all the different reviews and whatever else you're getting and then see what comes out interesting.

Just a little hack. Yeah. Or pop it all into, you know, an AI tool and see. See what they can get.

Oh, yeah, we've got that opportunity these days. Yeah. So my. So my situation. Let's kick this around. This bit of a. Kind of a live piece. So. So my. One of my differentiators is I've been in private equity for a long time in different. Different ways.

Right.

And this is interesting for the right person at the right time, someone who certainly knows that, you know, they want to sell their company and create more value and all that. The private equity angle is quite intriguing and mysterious and everything else like that. It kind of works quite well because there aren't many people out there who've come into the mentoring and coaching world from that background.

Right.

So that's one lane you could argue. Sharp end of the spear.

Right, Right.

When someone wants that or needs that or understands that, it's really clear.

Yeah.

But the majority of people, probably the majority of people listening to this show and certainly the ones who engage with me on LinkedIn, I have no idea what private equity is. And B, don't give a. Yeah, sure. But it's a. It's a unique. It's a unique positioning and mechanism. What. What's your thought Play that around in your head. We can kick this back for a couple of minutes because I think it's interesting for people to hear a live challenge here and say, that's interesting because I think it's important to some extent. But if you overplay it, it can become.

Exactly, exactly. That's what I was going like. They only care about what's in for them.

Right.

So if this uniqueness is not relevant to getting them a better result, then they won't care. But if it is relevant to them getting a better result, then it's worth exploring. That's the way I look at it.

That's interesting actually. So sometimes I'll be on stage and I'll say, and this is true actually in the last. If you go back a decade, private equity, if you want to sell your company for a lot of money, let's say the outcome is, hey, yeah, I've made that decision. I'm building a growth or a performance business. Business, that's my outcome. It's not a lifestyle business, it's this. But if you go back a decade, I think it was about 30% of all sort of eight and nine figure transactions had private equity influence or involvement. If you jump forward to the next decade, it's going to be about 80%.

Okay, so what changed?

Well, heap of stuff, but mainly the fact that private equity firms have doubled in the last five years. There's about 8,000 of them now there's six, I think $6 trillion of uninvested capital sitting in private equity firms access, right?

Yep.

And there's a bigger story behind that as to why, why would a big investor put money into private equity? It's just an incredible return in terms of the asset class. But the point that's interesting here is back to sort of things like problem awareness and those sort of concepts is that if you want to sell your business, here's the reality. If you want to sell your business rate or nine figures in the next, let's say five years, and you don't understand the world of private equity and you don't understand how to win the game, you're probably not going to, to be successful. That's the message. So yeah, to your point, I'm just drawing on your point.

Yeah, yeah.

If it's not relevant, people might say it's not relevant to me. I don't give a. But hold on. If the outcome is this and you don't understand this, there's we've created maybe a problem that they weren't aware of.

Yeah. I get it. I think it comes back to trying to like for you, showcasing your authority in this space. Like you can say, you know, the world's authority on this, but kind of prove it and whatever the, like, it might be the amount of deals that you've done, it might be the fact that you've been on both sides of the fence. Like you've got a lot of experience and there's something in there that needs to be drawn out as the uniqueness. I'm just not exactly sure what that is.

No, I don't think we're going to solve it in five minutes on a podcast. But I, I think the reason I wanted to kind of just throw that into the mix here is that's quite an important strategic conversation and decision for me and for what I'm trying to do. I don't mind sharing those things here on this as well because I think sometimes if people realize that like everyone's kind of going through different kind of questions in their business, it becomes more relevant to them too.

Yeah. And just on that.

Right.

Like a good way to think about it is to like, for instance, if you were to hire a professional copywriter, they will interview you, they'll interview your clients and they'll ask very similar questions and there'll be something in that as a recurring theme that will draw out that answer. That's generally the best way. If you can't think of it yourself, get other people to interview and. Yeah. That are experts in this area of drawing that out. And that's.

Yeah.

The objective. We're talking about the objectivity, aren't we? Because I think sometimes you, if you're too close to something, it's really.

Yeah, exactly. And you could just be, yeah. You know, banging your head trying to figure it out by yourself. But yeah, I would definitely brainstorm.

Let's, let's finish the conversation today or wrap the conversation up a little bit around the importance of firstly, clarity of brand. Everything we've spoken to today and obviously the way that you showcase that on a world class website. So the question behind this really is if you have, if you don't have those, those assets in place and their assets to business because they drive value and growth. What does it look like if you don't have them?

Right.

I want to, wouldn't mind hearing a couple of kind of case studies of yours here versus, you know, an example maybe of where you've helped someone go through a refresh or a rebrand or whatever and the difference it's made to their Business.

Yeah, absolutely. So look, it something that takes time. Like to me, a website is never finished, right? So you, I would say just get something up to start with whatever you've got, just put as much authority into whatever you've got and what, you know, all the trust elements.

Right.

But then think of it as if you've got nothing and you want to just put your name out there. If you can just keep adding value into your audience's life by adding, you know, helpful content, whatever that form is, and having lead magnets to help build trust in your brand, have an email marketing nurture sequence, whatever's needed basically, to just incrementally over time build trust in your brand. And then every time you get some more social proof or some more trust, like authority elements and impact metrics, just keep raising the bar on your website. So it's never finished. And then I would say for, you know, some clients that we have helped, I mean, yeah, generally it's. It's established business. I'm just trying to think of one. I would say Eric July, right, He is a YouTube star, right. He's, you know, got like, I don't know, 100 million views on YouTube, whatever it is. Right. Eric July. And he came to us. Us as this little case study, but he came to us with just the YouTube authority but no website presence at all. He did something himself. It was just terrible, Right. Had no authority on there. And so we knew that he had a big YouTube following. So what we decided to do. And he wanted to sell comic books, right. He was about to release his first comic book.

What's his brand about? Adversity. Is it about comics and things like anime and whatever or.

It's actually about three things. It's politics, right. It's heavy metal music and it's about comic books. So it's three times.

I do love it when people build businesses and things like that, which have got things that, you know, that's unapologetically about what he's into.

Right.

Isn't it like there's no.

Yes.

Maybe there's an alignment between comics and politics. Depending on how.

Yep.

How humorous you are or whatever. It's your sense of humor. But.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so anyway, the goal was. And we did his personal brand website, but also a website for the comic book. And he came to us, he said, look, I've got nothing but, you know, I want to get this comic book out there and I got a decent following. So. So, you know, I want to just. Yeah. See if I want to Go to Indiegogo like and just put up a here's my goal. And he had a goal of, I don't know, something really, really low. It was like 100,000. Not low but it was like 100,000 or whatever dollars that he wanted to sell in comic books. In the first two weeks he's like. And we put this coming soon page initially just to gauge interest and he sent people from his YouTube to opt in for this. And this was our little strategy just to gauge how much interest there would be. And then we said, right, you've got a ton of leads from this. We're going to need to get some really high level hosting, otherwise you're going to break your website when you release the book. And so we set it up like an indiegogo and we put the goal up there and all that. And within the first two weeks he made like $2.8 million off this one.

He actually, he made the comic himself. So it was his like.

No, well he, he did the, I think he did the, you know, the, the direction of it. But he had an illustrator do all the, all the illustrations and now he's done three. If you go to Ripper verse, R, I, double P, E, R, V, R, S, C I think dot com. Anyway, it's, yeah, he's now got three comic books on there and you know, he's made almost 10 million just from the three comic books.

So did you help him with that branding then Ripperverse or whatever it's called, did you?

Well, yeah, we just did. We did the website and the strategy to build the list first because he had a large YouTube but the point is he had no assets, he had no product. And then yeah, it was just a little bit of the strategy and, and putting up like you know, the Indiegogo style page and yeah, just driving a ton of traffic to it when it was ready. So yeah, that was it. Yeah, but that's a pretty extreme case study.

But yes, I guess seven bigger launch off. Off that. But no, but I think even, even if you, if you think about like maybe like a small business in the, in the Melbourne area who comes to you.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, so, because I think like the practical. We have different people on this show and I think sometimes it's like, you know, I've got a website, it's not really saying anything, I'm getting no leads. My go differentiate myself in my market and start to get some people downloading some form of lead magnet.

Right.

There might be something like that.

Yeah. Okay. Another one? Yeah. So Pilates instructor, right? She's got a little. Yeah, a little studio. A little Pilates studio. She had no website presence at all right now. She came to us in Covid, she said, look, you know, and she couldn't take on any more clients at point. She couldn't do anything for like six months because of lockdowns. And so in that time, she said, well, I want to try and get some online clients, you know, so she can do zoom videos. She didn't even know what zoom was, how to use it.

But back in those crazy days of COVID Yes.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so we put up a website for her at Pilates just for you dot com. And we helped her with that brand as well. My wife did Pilates with her for, you know, like a decade or whatever. And she realized that the thing that was unique about her was that she tailored every class to every, you know, individual person. So the brand was Pilates just for you. And that's what her messaging is all about. Plattersjustforyou.com if you want to check it out. And so we put this website up. I actually snuck over there and did a photo shoot with her just to get some photos online. And. And, you know. Yeah, helped her with the direction of the copy and things like that. We didn't write the copy. She wrote it herself. And she got a few testimonials from her, you know, clients that she had. And so then, yeah, the result from her was after having this website up for like six months, what, she got like 30 new, you know, online clients. But also, it boosted when. When obviously Covid was opened up again and she could run her studio, it boosted her studio numbers so much that she had to put on an extra instructor. And she's now got a waiting list, and she's had a waiting list for years now because of the website. And she's always sending messages. I'm so grateful. And, you know, this. This topic, the.

The concept of oversubscribed, you know, the point, which is. Yeah, we talked about scarcity, didn't we, beforehand, about scarcity can be different things, but like, you know, when you have something which is. Stands out, is unique like that, you, you know, people come to. To you.

Right.

Which is. Which is an amazing position to be in, I think, for some personal brands and businesses, for sure.

Exactly. Yeah. And when, you know, we can design websites in any type of nature, any type of business with E commerce OR service or SaaS or personal brand or course creator, coach or whatever. So, yeah, as Long as we use the same principles on every website. It does work and it's all about Robert Cialdini's principles of influence, basically. And, yeah, and, and like the story, brand approach and bit of spin selling in there from Neil Rackham. But putting those books together in a. Visually, I like, I like all those.

Books, Chowdini's book particularly.

There you go.

Influence and persuasion. Fantastic.

Yeah, exactly.

I use that all the time for people.

Yeah, cool, cool.

Well, listen, that was awesome, Greg, thanks very much for going through everything. I particularly like the. The Yoda story. That's my highlight.

Excellent.

Yeah, I'm joking. But if people want to reach out to you and like talk about their brand or their website. Website, how can they do that?

Yeah, so we actually put together a little lead magnet, right, it's at studio1design.com forward slash nick. And you can check it out right now.

There you go.

Yeah, it says, thanks for listening to Nick Bradley's awesome podcast, blah blah. It's got a picture of your scale up there. And so what they can do is just take a little quiz that has. Ask them 50 questions.

Right.

It's like, does your website have this yes or no? It's like a self audit. So then at the end of it, you'll get a score out of 50. Most people will be lucky to get 15 to 20.

Right.

Is that the average, like. I suppose, yeah. There's a lot of people who need help in this area. I get that.

Yeah, exactly. And so then they'll be able to see where their website can be improved. Basically shows them where the holes are, where they're potentially leaving money on the table. And then if they want our help, you can just go to studio1design.com or you can email me gregudio1design.com and myself or my general manager, Sally will read those emails. It probably won't be me.

That's fine, that's fine. Perfect. We'll make sure that all of that is linked to the show notes so people can kind of reach out. But yeah, mate, listen, great meeting you. Fantastic kind of stuff that you're doing. I love, I love people who are kind of focused in areas like this because I've seen it make a big difference, not only to businesses I've invested in or been involved in, but certainly to some of the clients that I have as well when they're trying to really start to kind of get traction as they're scaling their companies. So thanks for being on the show.

Great pleasure.

Hey, thank you for listening to this episode. Of scale up with Nick Bradley. If you enjoy the show just as much as I enjoy creating it for you, then I'd really appreciate you leaving a five star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. And while you're there, why not subscribe to the channel so you never miss a future episode? It really helps me, it helps the show. Plus it makes it easier for others to access the content that I'm producing week in and week out. And finally, if you want more information about anything you heard in today's show, or to find out how you can get more help in scaling up your business and your life, click the link in the Show Notes now to learn about our coaching, mentoring, and mastermind programs. See you soon.